First 360° panorama from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover

This Picasso-like self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity rover was taken by its Navigation cameras, located on the now-upright mast. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is the first 360° panoramic view from NASA's Curiosity rover. Most of the tiles are small copies of the full-resolution images that have not been sent back to Earth yet. Two of the tiles near the center are full-resolution. Mount Sharp is to the right, and the north Gale Crater rim can be seen at center.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is the first 360° panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The panorama was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera. Scientists will be taking a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the descent stage's rocket engines blasting the ground.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Remarkable image sets from NASA’s Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRS) are continuing to develop the story of Curiosity’s landing and first days on Mars.

The images from Curiosity’s just-activated navigation cameras (Navcams) include the rover’s first self-portrait, looking down at its deck from above. Another Navcam image set, in lower-resolution thumbnails, is the first 360° view of Curiosity’s new home in Gale Crater. Also downlinked were two higher-resolution Navcam shots providing the most detailed depiction to date of the surface adjacent to the rover.

“These Navcam images indicate that our powered descent stage did more than give us a great ride, it gave our science team an amazing freebie,” said John Grotzinger from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The thrust from the rockets actually dug a one-and-a-half-foot-long (0.5 meters) trench in the surface. It appears we can see martian bedrock on the bottom. Its depth below the surface is valuable data we can use going forward.”

Another image set, courtesy of the Context Camera (CTX) aboard NASA’s MRO, has pinpointed the final resting spots of the six 55-pound (25 kilograms) entry ballast masses. The tungsten masses impacted the martian surface at a high speed about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from Curiosity’s landing location.

On August 8, the team deployed the 3.6-foot-tall (1.1m) camera mast, activated and gathered surface radiation data from the rover’s Radiation Assessment Detector, and concluded testing of the rover’s high-gain antenna.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks’ elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm, to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover’s analytical laboratory instruments.

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater’s interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.